The Imposter Syndrome

Have you ever felt like a fraud? What is it like trying so hard to live up to what you think people expect of you in your personal life that you have forgotten who you are?

Harold Hillman was one of the only African American students during his time at Harvard and tried to live the life of a straight man in the US military.

He has written a book called The Imposter Syndrome and is talking to Kat Davidson.

612_weekends

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

The Imposter Syndrome was actually identified in the late 1970's by Drs. Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes and has been researched many times over the intervening years. I've been researching the syndrome and speaking about it for the past 5 years. My own book "Liberate Leadership: How the Imposter syndrome undermines leadership capability and what to do about it" was published in August 2012.

I had experienced the syndrome for more than 25 years when I realised there was a name for it. For those who experience it,the syndrome is latent until something in our external environment creates personal uncertainty. Each of us is sensitive to different external events and then we attribute meaning to those events, depending on our backgrounds and world view. Clearly for Harold, being black in a predominantly white environment and being gay in a predominantly straight environment were triggers he was sensitive to.

I'm delighted to see someone else talking about the syndrome and particularly in the context of leadership. In doing so, more organisations will recognise that they can unlock the potential in their leaders by helping them overcome the Imposter Syndrome.